Tag Archives: j. geils band

“That’s Paul Stanley of Kiss from 1981, the Creatures of the Night Tour.” Photo by James Pappaconstantine

“Gene Simmons from the 1981 Creatures of the Night Tour. We had back stage passes. We’d method the night before.” Photo by James Pappaconstantine

“Vinnie Vincent from Kiss on the 1981 show. He was really nice. A cool guy (when I met him).” Photo by James Pappaconstantine

“That’s the guitar player (Mark Reale) for a band called Riot and that was actually taken in Augusta, at the Civic Center. He’s, unfortunately, dead now. They were a really great band. It was a Scorpions, Rainbow and Riot show.” Photo by James Pappaconstantine

“That’s Alice Cooper on the Special Forces tour in 1981. He had his hair up like that, kinda’ looking like a geisha girl with these two chopsticks. Then, on the last song, he came out of a locker that was on stage and did ‘School’s Out.’ He let his hair down and said, ‘Aren’t you glad I didn’t cut it?'” Photo by James Pappaconstantine

“That’s Rod Sewart around ’81. If I remember right, that was the Tonight I’m Yours Tour. It was a great time. I had girls all around me. He put on a great show.” Photo by James Pappaconstantine

“That’s Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden. I think that was 1984 on the Piece of Mind Tour at the Civic Center. That’s when we got thrown out of a bar. He was one of the guys fighting.” Photo by James Pappaconstantine

That’s Johnny Ramone (of the Ramones) at the USM gym and they weren’t very good.I think, at that point, they all hated each other and were going through the motions. It was in the 80s.” Photo by James Pappaconstantine

“That’s Randy Rhoads.” Photo by James Pappaconstantine

“Pat Benatar right around ’81, I think. It was great because I was standing on a chair and she looked right out at me. I was super happy when I got that back with my film.” Photo by James Pappaconstantine

“The J. Geils Band on December 3ist. I wanna’ say ’82 or ’83. That’s me (standing) on a chair. And I had a star filter on my lens.” Photo by James Pappaconstantine

“Peter Wolf (of the J. Geils Band) on New Year’s Eve. They used to love to come on New Year’s Eve. He’s still one of my favorite front men.” Photo by James Pappaconstantine

“And there’s J. Geils himself, who is no longer in the band.” Photo by James Pappaconstantine

That’s (Peter Wolf) again, New Year’s Eve with a bottle of Champagne. Photo by James Pappaconstantine

“Blue Oyster Cult, Eric Bloom. That was the Mirrors Tour and they had mirrors taped to the backs of their guitars and they were reflecting the light off into the crowd.” Photo by James Pappaconstantine

“That’s (Eugene Hutz of) Golgol Bordello at the State Theater and they were incredible. It was so fun.” Photo by James Pappaconstantine

“That’s ZZ Top, a couple years ago at Scarborough Downs.” Photo by James Pappaconstantine

“That is Laura Wilde at the Asylum in Portland. She opened up for Ted Nugent. She was a lot of fun. She’s an Australian, really cute, obviously.” Photo by James Pappaconstantine

“That’s Dennis Casey of Flogging Molly at the State Theater. He does these great arial jumps that I tried to get.” Photo by James Pappaconstantine

Pappaconstantine got thrown out of Three Dollar Dewey’s in the Old Port with Iron Maiden. He hung out on Mötley Crüe’s tour bus on Congress Street. He met Gene Simmons of Kiss without his makeup on (in the days when no one saw him without it) but didn’t dare take a picture.

In the 1980s, he got in trouble with the fuzz after partying with Quiet Riot in his apartment. Ask him for the details on that one.

Pappaconstantine started out in 1977 with a Kodak Instamatic, in the days when you could bring a camera right into a rock show. It had an extension for a rotating, four-sided flash cube. He remembers it looking like a lighthouse on top. Then he saw some pictures a buddy had shot at a Jethro Tull show with a Pentax K1000 35mm camera.

“He had way better photos than I did,” said Pappaconstantine during an interview in Portland. “I was like — wow — I gotta’ get a better camera.”

Less than a year later the buddy sold his Pentax to Pappaconstantine’s mother, who gave it to him for his 18th birthday.

“I used that camera forever,” he said.

Portland native James Pappaconstantine has been shooting rock’n’roll concert photos since he was a teenager in the 1970s. His pictures have appeared in magazines, on posters and graced album jackets. Troy R. Bennett | BDN

Back then, he shot straight from the audience. He didn’t have any special access. Standing in line outside, often in the cold, he waited to get into shows at the head of the crowd. Then, he’d make a dash for the standing room right in front of the stage. Once there, he did his best to cling to the barricade in the surging crowd.

“If I didn’t (get up front) I’d always get heads or hands in my shots,” he said.

Money was tight for the teenage Pappaconstantine and he didn’t have film to waste on photos of concertgoers’ noggins and hairdos.

“I could afford a concert ticket and then maybe a roll of film — maybe two,” he said.

After the show, with the concert still ringing in his ears, Pappaconstantine would drop his film off at the Fotomat and wait a week to see if his pictures came out well. Sometimes he was happy, sometimes he was disappointed.

“Then, right around 1980, I had this brilliant idea,” he remembers.

At the top row of the Cumberland County Civic Center, where most of the big rock shows used to take place, there was a booth where radio broadcasters would call hockey games. Pappaconstantine realized there were folding chairs in that booth.

Instead of waiting in line to get in first and run for the barricade, he’d run like Rocky Balboa to the booth at the top of the stairs. There, he’d grab a folding chair and sprint back down to the floor and find a spot to stand.

During the show, when he wanted to take a picture, Pappaconstantine unfolded the chair, hopped on, aimed and fired away. Then he’d hop back down before security noticed. By then, rockers were starting to ban cameras at shows.

“I’d be above all the heads and hands and I could get good shots,” he said.

His system worked out great, for a while.

In 1981, he was shooting pictures of Ozzy Osbourne’s guitarist, Randy Rhoades, from his temporary perch on a folding chair when his plan fell apart.

“I kept seeing this flashlight point at me,” he said. “I thought, ‘what is going on?’”

Suddenly, he felt hands seize him and pull him off his chair. Security guards dragged him out of the crowd and into the hallway where they threatened to break his camera if he didn’t hand over the film. Pappaconstantine was 19 or 20 years old at the time and pretty freaked out.

He gave them film from his camera. It’s something he still regrets.

The roll of film in the camera had, what he thought would be, great photos of Randy Rhoads — who died the next year at age 25, going down in history as one of the greatest and most influential rock guitarists of all times.

The guards didn’t get the roll he had in his pants pocket, though. It had a few, precious shots of Rhoads, but mostly pictures of an unknown opening act called Def Leppard.

“Back then, in the back of every magazine, people were selling photos,” he said. “The record companies weren’t getting anything from it.”

So, he said he understands why artists and their managers want to control who is taking pictures at a show — up to a point.

“For me, I wasn’t selling my work. I was creating a memory that I could always look back on,” he said. “I think that’s what photographs do.”

Around 400 shows later, Pappaconstantine is still shooting at concerts. His camera has a digital chip in it instead of a roll of film, but his outlook is just the same. Although he often shoots on official assignment for magazines and websites, and his pictures have graced artist’s CD packaging and posters, he still doesn’t do it for money. He does it for the love of music, pictures and memories.